korla pandit had a daily afternoon music tv show in LA back in the 1950s where he played his unique percussive style of hammond organ while mystical cloud projections passed in the background and the camera focused in on his dreamy hypnotic eyes.

so dreamy & hypnotic, in fact, that wealthy women started sending him really expensive gifts, like grand pianos. rumors began to circulate that pandit was actually hypnotizing women through the tv & the concern got so great that the station cancelled him and he was replaced by and up and coming pianist - liberace.

korla slipped into obscurity, eventually playing organ at silent film revival houses in LA until tim burton cast him for a cameo as himself in ed wood.

watch this on videosift.

there is a review of my show at the mendel art gallery in this week’s edition of planet S, saskatoon’s city magazine. i’m happy to find that the reviewer understands what i’m doing, with the review titled “the beauty of grotesque”. the reviewer says “[my drawings] are seeming to be part of a larger whole that Yamaguchi is pointing toward”. i think my drawings make sense when they are seen all together, as part of one experience. that’s why i like to hang as many drawings on one wall as possible, maybe not even using frames so they can all be close together. that way, nothing is separating my drawings from each other, and also, i don’t have to buy frames.

i also like the ending part: “This juxtaposition, creating a place where we can neither be only horrified or simply think happy, cutesy thoughts makes Yamaguchi’s work both enjoyable and memorable.” i can’t separate those feelings in my mind. they are not opposites to me, they are all living in my head at the same time. i guess my art work is kind of like “yami-nabe style”. everything is all mixed together, and you never know what you’re going to get.

here is the review:

The Beauty Of Grotesque

YAMAGUCHI’S WORK BLURS LINE BETWEEN HUMOUR, HORROR
by Bart Gazzola

PERSONAL :: POLITICAL
YUKA YAMAGUCHI, DAVE GEARY
MENDEL ART GALLERY
RUNS TO SUNDAY 3

Yuka Yamaguchi is currently exhibiting at the Mendel Art Gallery, through an ongoing gallery project titled “Artists by Artists.” The project pairs an experienced artist (in this case, Yuka is paired with noted Saskatoon artist and frequent Planet S contributor extraordinaire Dave Geary) with a more emerging one, with the resulting work exhibited in the lower space at the Mendel.

Over the past few years, the concept has been interpreted in different ways by the different participants: sometimes the result features solely the work of the junior artist, and other times a collaborative installation takes place. In regards to the current installation, Yamaguchi explains on her website that the pair made the decision to collaborate on Personal : Political because Geary’s work, with its propaganda motifs and socialist imagery is the latter, whereas Yamaguchi’s work seems to be very much biographical—a personal narrative that is being shared with the viewer.

Yamaguchi was also one of a number of artists who exhibited at the now-defunct Royal Red Gallery: her small, delicate drawings immediately pulled the viewer in, even in that massive space—and they’re as well-executed as they are disturbing. Her bio describes her as a self-taught artist, from Kobe, Japan, stating that “her drawings are inward-looking, reaching both extremes of cute and grotesque.” Very simply done, with coloured pencil or ballpoint pen—and always seeming to be part of a larger whole that Yamaguchi is pointing towards—her works are indicators that sometimes art school can be the worst thing for a potential artist. Her unique, bizarre vision could easily have been lost there, or subjected to the usual problem of instructors wanting to create younger versions of themselves.

Works such as “New Heartbeat”, where a young girl holds her very anatomically correct heart to her ear in a gesture of love or listening, or “After All…”, where a boy is partly flayed by what looks like a common kitchen utensil, easily fit within the grotesque. But “Chicken Fight”, or “Self Portrait, Age 17”, are both . . . well, cute. Not a word I use often, but it applies here.

Some works incorporate both of these seemingly disparate concepts, such as “Inseparable”, where a cute, pre-teen couple are tying themselves together by their respective hanging tendons and muscles, which hang in ribbons from their severed calves. Both are smiling, and seem pleased with the arrangement, and I am reminded of the Japanese horror film Audition, which was really a love story, with the classic admonition that “you must love only me.” “All I Can See” is both creepy and very, very funny, and will make some men reconsider before they carry on a conversation with a woman’s breasts instead of her face.

On her website (www.plastiquemonkey.com) she explains that her latest endeavour is the “turn everything around you cute and fun” project, and her sense of humour is clear in her work, although sometimes that humour at play is somewhat black. This juxtaposition, creating a place where we can neither be only horrified or simply think happy, cutesy thoughts makes Yamaguchi’s work both enjoyable and memorable.

also, it looks like i am on Bravo!News this week. i was interviewed by them back in april. i don’t have a cable connection at the moment (we’re moving this week), so i don’t know. i was also interviewed by the local Shaw TV channel. the interview aired in mid-april. again, i didn’t watch tv enough to catch it. if you are watching tv sometime tomorrow in canada, you might see me actually talking.

here are a couple of monkey videos from japan.

pan-kun is a chimpanzee who has many human adventures with the bulldog, james. in this episode, pan-kun and james experience firefighter training and an earthquake simulation.

pan-kun… please stop eating grapes or i can’t stop laughing at you…

pan-kun and james go to an elementary school and do sit-ups. the average 10-year-old japanese boys can do 19 sit-ups and average japanese female adult can do 18 sit-ups in 30 seconds. how many sit-ups can pan-kun and james do?!

okay, i shouldn’t call pan-kun a monkey, he’s a chimpanzee — a kind of ape. i call him a monkey because i have monkey-chimpanzee confusion. in my japanese mind, they are all “saru” to me…

the title is: “Варежка”. it’s a russian soviet animation.

according to farhad2000 from videosift, in russia these type of animations were shown on TV in the evening, so the whole family could watch together. most of the animations were based on fairy tales.

beautiful stories and beautiful colours. if only animations were like this nowadays, they wouldn’t cause pokemon panic. :P

i’m thinking about russia these days because my drawings got linked from a stylish russian design site, omami. from their post i learned how to write “plastique monkey” in russian, using the cyrillic alphabet. welcome to Пластик Манки. i don’t know how to pronounce it.

when i first started this blog, the header image was a different photo of mine, in black and white. the title was written in the “Soviet” font, which makes english writing look like cyrillic. the “O” is especially cool…

yes, wtf is correct. she beautifully doesn’t make any sense. why is she talking about a radiator? and he was cinnamon? all i know is she is passionate. the camera work and random piano are marvelous. at the end, someone bumps into the microphone, which adds a sweet touch of amauteurism. perfect. that was beautiful, precious.

i’ve already put this up on videosift.com, but i decided to push it little harder on my blog. currently this video has only received three upvotes (well, actually two votes since i voted for myself…sigh). i’m thankful not to get a downvote (yet). hopefully other members will find it amusing before it disappears into a black hole.

i can’t thank sharpeworld enough for finding such treasures. hurrah for public access TV!

candy pants~ candy pants~
oh sugar britches, you got my nerves in stitches…
candy pants, you.make.my.heart.do.a.breakdance!
candy pants, oh, candy pants~

Lionel Davis　sings “candy pants” from his album “I Got the Mack in the Sack.”

…subliminal. i almost laughed to death when i found out that this man is also a minister - exclusively a minister of sobriety. amazing. i love this type of tv shows with delicious mediocrities. this one particularly hit my spot.

i used to watch the quebec music channel called “musiqueplus” in kingston. my favorite show, called “dollaraclip”, featured incredibly rare and weird music videos - treasures so to speak. they were called dollaraclips because they all looked like they were made for one dollar. the host was a comedian, louis-jose houde. he spoke very very fast in french, so i couldn’t understand him, but it still sounded funny to me. plus, he’s quite cute and stylish in that montreal way.

it’s still only wednesday. i hope everyone can spend the rest of the week happy with this song in mind.

i knew it! we need to learn uchuu-jin lingo to communicate with martians!

the last big festival of the summer in japan is jizo-bon, obon for children. jizo are stone buddha statues that are said to protect children. they’re mostly very old, with the faces partly worn away. you can see them all over japan, often just sitting by the side of the road, in little altars. it’s said that in kyoto alone there are more than five thousand jizo statues. you don’t need to go to temples to see them, you see them everywhere. they’re part of our daily life.

during jizo-bon, jizo statues are washed and decorated with red bibs and red hats. we serve meals to thank them for protecting children. jizo-bon is traditionally held for two days (aug 23- 24). everyone gathers in a community hall to prepare for it. i would get to wear my yukata (summer kimono). kids receive a lantern with their name on and also halloween-style snack packs. there are games and entertainment and “bon-odori” dancing.

bon-odori is a group dance. everyone does the same dance, moving in a circle around a float where taiko (japanese drum) is played. we don’t take any formal lessons but everybody knows the dance — you learn by watching the person in front of you. i like this type of group dancing. everybody moves the same way and goes around and around and around.

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the singer, misora hibari was the most famous and most important singer in japan. she started performing as a singer at the age of 7. she became very popular around the end of the war, when japan was still in the middle of reconstruction. her pure voice gave hope to many japanese. she was the queen of enka. she became very ill when she was 50. despite the overwhelming pain, she returned to the stage (tokyo dome) two years later and sang 39 songs. it was aired live on tv. i ran home from school to watch her. she was very strong. her voice was beautiful. her strong love to sing permeated through the screen. she never showed any sign of pain on her face. she assured the audience there was no need to worry. but it was obvious that she was still very ill. at the same time, she was so alive. she died the next year.

my mom has a misora hibari collection, which includes all her songs on 3 CDs. i borrowed them one time and kept them for so long that my mom had to call and ask me to return them :D i love misora hibari’s style very much, especially her oldest songs. my mom happily wonders why i like enka so much, since many young people don’t listen to enka. well, i don’t know. i just like enka. so does paul.

3: he can run faster than a bullet train without moving his upper body
2: he looks off to both sides even when he’s facing straight
1: he’s weak. his arms and legs are easily dislocated. when he gets tired he smokes cigarettes (this part was edited out later on).

1953

beaten by the rain of acacia
i just want to have my life be over
dawn breaks, the sun rises
in the light of morning
i wonder if he will shed tears
when he finds me cold…

1969